Factual Dog is on a Break

To our legions of loyal readers: The Factual Dog is on a brief break for the next several months due to time contraints. We will back in force, as there is tons of topicality to cover. However, it will be a little while before we can get to it. In the meantime, keep those cards and letters coming.

This is jumping off point of Union forces at 4:30 in the morning on May 12, 1864. General Hancock's 3rd Corp, and other elements of the Army of the Potomac, approximately 30,000 strong, charged across this field to the Confederate earthworks on the other side of this field. The point at the tree line in the middle of this picture, taken in September 2005, is known as the bloody angle.  

Standing on this exact spot, Maj. General John Sedgewick dismissed warnings from his staff to keep his head down. He was looking at the confederates line on the edge of the woods in the far distance, across the field. "They couldn't hit an elephant from this distance!" he replied, just before a .55 caliber bullet hit him below the eye and exited out the back of his head. He was the highest ranking Union officer to die in combat. 

Trenches comprising Lee's final line at Spotsyvania. It was on this spot that Lee began to realize things were going to be different from now on. Grant, two miles away, wired back to Washington his famous message that made headlines across the country: "I propose to fight it out on this line if it takes all summer" 

Spotslyvania Virginia at the point of the Mule Shoe Salient. May, 1864 

142 years ago this weekend

Abraham Lincoln rose from his chair on a modest hill in Pennsylvania 142 years ago tomorrow and saved the world.

He was surrounded by a large crowd who had gathered to hear him give a few remarks after Edward Everest was done with his two hour dramatic recounting of the epic struggle that had occurred on that same spot the previous July. The people had to watch their step as they jostled for space among hundreds of freshly dug graves that were lined up in coecentric arcs, forming a giant half moon.

The President was in the midst of what had become an intensely unpopular war. The anti-war riots in New York four months earlier were more violent and deadly than any riots in America before or since. A Republican-majority Congress was starting to grow weary of the growing casualty lists. A Congressional Committee on the Conduct of the War was holding daily hearings and calling officers from the field to testify. There was wide spread disagreement and confusion as to the purpose of the war.

The Democrats, at least the ones who had not joined the armed rebellion against the government, had grown so disenchanted with the conflict that they were backing a fast-growing anti-war movement. Called the Copperheads, they vigorously advocated an immediate withdrawal of troops from the war zone.

Foreign diplomats regarded the President as a rube from the American provinces, an embarrassment with no place among the great leaders of the world. His opponents, and some in his own party, thought he was inarticulate and undereducated, which he was, and did not appreciate "nuance". He was so insecure about giving impromtu speeches that he rarely spoke in public on important issues without a prepared speech.

Casualties, dead and wounded, on each of a dozen days in the previous 18 months, exceeded the total number of casualties to date in both Iraq wars combined. At the place he was to speak, Gettysburg, 53,000 Americans fell in three days. The U.S. population at the time was one-sixth of today's population. And no end was in sight.

The President would have to say something to prepare the country to fight it out no matter what the cost. He had to explain to the country and the world what they were fighting for, in a way that they could understand it. Otherwise, they would never stand for the hard work and sacrifice that was still in front of them.

In short, Linclon needed to say something to redefine and refocus the purpose of the war, or all would be lost. So he spoke the following 242 words:

"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

"Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

"But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.

"It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

After he spoke these words, nobody seriously talked about the European powers intervening on behalf of the South again. This short speech - it's a poem, really - was read by every household in the country, at a time when the American public was far more literate than it is now. The war was now for freedom and self-government, and was no longer simplyt a territorial dispute to "preserve the Union". The speech gave the people the strength and purpose needed to carry on.
When Lincoln got back to town, one of his first acts was to call up General U.S. Grant to take command of all of the armies of the United States. In doing so, he sent a message loud and clear to Southerners, Northerners, and foreigners alike: we are going to win this war regardless of the cost. Grant was going to come east, tear into Lee's army, and grind away until the life drained out of it. This strategy cost another 350,000 lives, but it worked. And it would not have been possible if Lincoln had not made his "few appropriate remarks" on November 19, 1863.

Son Volt at the 9:30, October 21, 2005

The Son Volt show was one of those concerts that I really wanted to say was great, but in truth, enjoyed it only so-so.

First the good: Farrar & Co. played a tight set. They have an excellent lead guitarist with strong Dickie Betts/Jimmy Page bloodlines. Son Volt reached down and played a good old Tupelo song (Chickamauga), which I didn’t expect, but loved. They jammed some of the tunes off of their excellent album Trace, which was expected, but worth going to the show for nonetheless.

Now, about the things I found annoying: First, many of their songs sound too much alike. They start slow and mournful, then comes the predictable three beats of silence followed by crashing drums, bass and power chords simultaneously kicking in. That works for a few songs, but I wished they could have mixed it up a little.

The second thing that irritates me is Farrar himself. I like his singing well enough, but I can take it for about 45 minutes. After a while, he begins to sound – I’m searching for a word here – whiny. His singing resembles a low-pitched whine, if that is possible. He also comes off as kind of a prick. For all I know, he’s a chummy fellow to meet at the local pub. But on stage, he seemed wooden and aloof from the crowd. He spoke all of about seven words over two hours. Even Kurt Cobain at his most sardonic would interact with his audience between songs.

The newer stuff made by the reformed band was a little heavy and gratuitously loud for my delicate ears. It’s almost as if Farrar can’t think of a way to find new textures in his art, so he solves the problem by turning it up to eleven. Finally, his lyrics, much of which are of a political bent that we don’t subscribe to here, are obviously an important component of Farrar’s songs. He is an exceptionally strong lyricist. So would it kill him to make them audible? I’m not talking about early REM-style singing. Murmuring was their thing, and it worked. It’s just that Son Volt had the volume on their instruments turned up so loud, you couldn’t hear any vocals except the aforementioned whining.

The company was good, however. Old friend JM joined me, for probably our 50th concert over the past 25 years. So that was cool. We had a glass of bourbon with Hackmuth to start things off too (although I was still smarting from the chess debacle of the previous Wednesday). To cap off the night, we hit Mario’s for a 2:30 am steak and cheese. All in all, it was a good evening; but I will probably skip the Volt next time, and keep my eyes peeled for Wilco.

Liz Phair at the 9:30 Club, October 12, 2005

I saw Liz at the 9:30 Club last night, and it prompted a few thoughts about Liz, taste, and music critics.

First, I can unapologetically say that I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of the show, and I do not categorize Liz as a “guilty pleasure”. To me, a guilty pleasure is when I crank up Soft Cell or Modern English when I hear them on the radio. I am guilty of that, and you might as well know that about me.

Liz, on the other hand, is a serious talent, and has written serious music. That is not to say that she is always being “serious” with her music these days. She is not. She is simply doing her best to cash in on her particular shtick: to wit, her ability pose as a wholesome Midwestern suburban girl (now a mom) who happens to write and sing catchy songs, often with overt, graphically sexual themes. She says she is into the “high-low” aesthetic, although I’m not exactly sure what that means.

She began the show in a drab gray, zip-up sweatshirt that apparently came from the Target five-dollar bin. She made a few statements about how scared she is to watch ghost documentaries on TV, a fear that causes her to constantly change the channel during the scary parts. Well, I do that too and – wait a minute! – I have some tee shirts from that same bin at Target! With her acoustic guitar in hand, freshly bleached wisps of blond hair loosely draping half of her face, and an unplugged set ready to begin, her message was clear: I’m the girl/soccer mom next door and I’m going to play some nice, relaxing music.

And that persona, of course, was a pose. It was part of the joke that everyone was enjoying. You could almost hear the audience thinking, “When’s the sweatshirt coming off Liz?” The calls for “Fuck and Run” started quite early in the show – coming almost exclusively from the women in the audience - and continued until she played a rousing, heavy metal-tinged rendition of the song. She has clearly gotten over her stage fright problems that, according to legend, plagued her early career.

Once she plugged in and, predictably, shed the sweatshirt, the real Liz took over. She played the part of the sex-goddess-rock-star-next-door to the hilt. And I don’t have a problem with that. She did it with confidence, and to really piss off the critics, she was clearly enjoying every minute of it. She smiled throughout the whole show. A lot of people don’t have time and patience for the faux angst that seems to be a prerequisite for admission into the Indie/Alternative music scene. There is a time and place for everything, and it’s nice to see a performer actually be comfortable in her own skin and having a good time.

Liz Phair knows that the audience is paying to see her play music they are familiar with (Anything from Guyville, most songs from Whip Smart and WhiteChocolateSpaceEgg, and the hits from her most recent two albums), and are OK with hearing a tolerable number of new songs that maybe they have not been exposed to. That is what we wanted, and that is what we got. If, on top of that, she wants to shake her moneymaker – figuratively of course – that’s fine too. She is a very good looking woman.

Many of my good friends, who fashion themselves as music purists (and whom I thank for originally turning me on to Liz), seem to have soured on Liz Phair. I’m quite sure it is because she has gone “pop” on them and they are turned off by her album cover poses. I almost expect to hear her called her a “traitor” when I talk to them about her. In this respect, I am reminded of Pete Seeger running around backstage at Newport in 1966 with an ax in his hands, looking for cables to cut after Dylan went electric at the famous folk festival.

Dylan pissed off a lot of purists then too. I’m not necessarily saying that Liz is going to put out this decade’s “Like a Rolling Stone”. My point is simply that we should leave her alone, let her take her talent where it will, and if the best thing she will ever do is that first album, then that is better than 99 percent of the other acts out there. For that alone, she deserves our continuing respect.

Read now. Weep later.

What follows is about the most intelligent piece I've seen in a newspaper in many years. Read it, print it, file it. In ten years, read it again and sadly say to yourself, "If they had only listened".

'They Are All So Wrong'

Four years after 9/11, Washington keeps courting strategic error.

BY MARK HELPRIN Friday, September 9, 2005 12:01 a.m. EDT

September 11 was not so much a discrete event as part of a continuum. It was the result of broad strategic failures that, preceding it by decades, continue to this day and are likely to continue on. It is as if the country has lost, as exemplified by the Left now out of power, a great deal of the will to self-preservation, and, as exemplified by the Right now in charge, not a little of its capacity for self-defense. Our politics and policies have somehow been parceled out to opportunists like Michael Moore--purveyor of conspiracy theories and hatreds, whose presentation, unclean in every respect, is honored nonetheless by the controlling rump of Democrats--and to Bushmen like "Kip" Hawley of Homeland Security, father of the proposal to allow carry-on ice-picks, bows and arrows, and knives with blades up to five-inches long.

For more than 20 years prior to September 11, Islamic terrorists imprisoned and murdered our diplomats and military personnel, destroyed our civil aviation, machine-gunned our civilians, razed our embassies, attacked an American warship and, in 1993, the U.S. itself. For varying reasons, none legitimate, we hesitated to mount an offensive against the terrorists' infrastructure, hunt them down, eliminate a single rogue regime that supported them, or properly disconcert our fatted allies whose robes they infested. This was comparable in its way to Munich. Only in 2001, when it became obvious to any rational being that we must, did we retaliate, but even then in the face of domestic pressure to judicialize the response, which was exactly what we had done all along.

The underlying corollary to this reflex of appeasement is the notion that our military options are constrained financially, as if we are not a nation of stupendous wealth and it has not been the American tradition since the Civil War to spend, in support of war, with the intensity of war itself. In 1945, we devoted 38.5% of GNP to defense, the equivalent of $4.76 trillion now. The current $400 billion defense budget is a twelfth of that and only 3.2% of GDP, as opposed to the average of 5.7% of GNP in the peacetime years between 1940 and 2000. A false sense of constraint has arisen in every quarter of society. It is the ethos of the administration, the press, the civilian side of the Pentagon, and many of the prominent uniformed military brought to high rank in recent years.

They are all so wrong. In violating established tradition and throwing aside advantage and elemental common sense, they waste American lives. And for what? What moral construction would allow anyone to spend more than 2,000 dead and tens of thousands of wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan--so far--while insisting without major exception that cutting costs is a virtue? When is holding back from one's troops at war the reinforcements, armor and basic equipment they need a virtue rather than a sin?

Is it not the duty of the secretary of defense, his chiefs, and the wide array of generals to press energetically--even to the point of resignation--for whatever is necessary (not the minimum, but a safe surplus) to support the armies in the field? If they do not, who will? Had the president gone to Congress on September 12 and asked for almost anything, he would have been granted it. But he never did. This was a fundamental strategic error. If you must go to war, do not do so hesitantly, with half a heart. And in answer to the rationale that the casualties of this war are relatively light, one does not decently measure casualties against those of previous wars, but in terms of whether they can be avoided.

Apart from the paucity of armored vehicles, body armor, and other staples of battle, the chief problem of prosecuting the Iraq war has been the size and scale of the force. Despite inaccurate claims of unprecedented speed in the advance to Baghdad, the three weeks of halting action it took to get there, with lines of supply that are to this day poorly protected, were both spur and instruction for the insurgency. In what is only apparently a paradox, the military objective should have been less the conquest of territory and echelons than of morale, and, to accomplish this, territory and echelons would have to have been subdued with the blinding speed, shock and awe of the Six-Day and Gulf wars. The instant the Arab world realized that the promised shock and awe had not materialized, the insurgency was born.

We then nurtured it by deploying a fraction of the ratio (10:1) long experience indicates is necessary for suppression; by dismissing the enemy as mere "thugs," when, although they are thugs and worse, they have the thousand-year motivation of their civilization defending its heartland from Persians, Mongols, Shiites, and now Christians; and by gratuitously elevating our aims from the purely defensive to the transcendental, while steadily diluting the little power we have in the hope of forcing the entire Arab and Muslim worlds to a new politics. From a country where they have been held down in their beleaguered enclaves for two-and-a-half years, how are 140,000 soldiers to transform the highly aggressive and deeply rooted political cultures of 1.2 billion people?

Ceaselessly, we court strategic error. At the end of the Cold War, assuming that history had concluded, we discarded too much military power. This continues through the present, rationalized by reference to transformation. But it is yet further error to believe that military-technical evolution can make up for the kind of deficiencies and poor strategic judgments from which no machine can save an army. Continual and remarkable innovation is both indispensable and expensive, but President Clinton required budgetary choice between innovation and everything else, and his successor has yet to disagree. The root of the error that offers transformation as a substitute for so much that is crucial is the conviction that having both would exceed reasonable military expenditures and somehow break the common weal.

Having made many wrong choices, we find ourselves at yet another strategic crossroads, where invisibly to the general public we are about to choose wrongly again. We are reshaping the military into a gendarmerie, configured for small wars, counterinsurgency, peacekeeping and nation-building, all at the expense of the type of force that could deter or defeat a rising China. Although we need a gendarmerie, we cannot do without heavy formations and the many additional ships required for a navy--now less than half the size of the Reagan fleet and shrinking--to exploit our natural advantage in the Pacific.

The U.S. will chase every terrorist mouse (which is good, unless it means also neglecting the core competencies of the armed forces), while lessening and dispersing its power, and moving from previous centers of gravity (Europe, the Western Pacific) to Africa, Central Asia and the Middle East. This will create a long and open alley through which China will run. Among other things, by placing markers in every trouble spot, we will probably be tied down and distracted, taxingly and often, to our enemies' delight.

When China completes its run up the broad alley we have afforded it, it will much sooner be the other pole in a once-again bipolar world, which will create the opportunity for terrorists in the guise of liberation movements to gather under its wing, as they did with the Soviet Bloc during the Cold War. Ironically, in reconfiguring the military to focus primarily on terrorism, we may not only give China a great opening, but create for the terrorists a new lease on life.

The war in Iraq has been poorly planned and executed from the beginning, and now, like a hurricane over warm water, the insurgency is in a position to take immense energy from the fundamental divisions in that nation. The rise of Chinese military power, although lately noted, has met with no response. America's borders are open, its cities vulnerable, its civil defense nonexistent, its armies stretched thin. We have taken only deeply inadequate steps to prepare for and forestall a viral pandemic that by the testimony of experts is a high probability and could kill scores of millions in this country alone. That we do not see relatively simple and necessary courses of action, and are not led and inspired to them, represents a catastrophic failure of leadership that bridges party lines.

Perhaps this and previous administrations have had an effective policy just too difficult to comprehend because they have ingeniously sheltered it under the pretense of their incompetence. But failing that, the legacy of this generation's presidents will be promiscuous declarations and alliances, badly defined war aims, opportunities inexplicably forgone, ill-supported troops sent into the field, a country at risk without adequate civil protections, and a military shaped to fight neither the last war nor this one nor the next.

Katrina and the Waves

No, this is not a nostalgia piece about 1980’s one-hit wonder bands. Rather, this posting represents my first dip back into the political realm, after a summer of book reviews and travel postings. I will make this quick.

If anyone is wondering about the difference between Democrats and Republicans, one need only look at the mismanagement of the Katrina disaster by Louisiana state and local politicians and compare with (a) Guiliani/Pataki after 9/11; and (b) Haley Barbour in Mississippi. Who would you rather be in charge of the first response if your community were devastated?

In New Orleans, the corrupt mayor did not even use the plan that had been developed and tested for the specific scenario that unfolded. Hundreds of city school buses were moved to the lowest lying area of the city, and were never used to evacuate people as called for in the plan. Those buses are under water now. Even though in previous hurricane, when 10,000 people were evacuated to the Superdome and security problems resulted, the mayor did nothing this time around to provide security there.

On Saturday, the President had to demand that the incompetent Democrat governor to order an evacuation. She did not ask for the National Guard and federal troops until after the storm, even though Bush had given her the authority to do so two days before the hurricane. The mayor did not even contact the National Hurricane Center when Katrina was bearing down on his city. To this day, the governor and the mayor are in a public dispute over whether to force people out of their homes. That probably won’t do much to instill confidence among their constituents.

Hillary Clinton, of course, is saying that FEMA should be taken out of the Department of Homeland Security. Never mind that Hillary voted to have FEMA a part of the Department in the first place! The Department itself was Joe Lieberman’s pet project. Bush agreed to create it in the spirit of bipartisanship, even though he opposed the concept from the beginning. So it’s Bush’s fault that FEMA is less effective as part of Homeland than it was when it was an independent agency?

As for the President, he should have returned from vacation a day earlier, if for no other reason than to avoid the bad PR. Does Bush want to make Michael Moore’s job easier? The federal response was about 24 hours behind where it should have been, so Bush doesn’t get a free ride from me either. He probably should fire the heads of Homeland and FEMA and replace them with professional executives, rather than lawyers. The guy at the head of FEMA is clearly way out of his element.

As for rebuilding New Orleans, I’m not sure why we should put tens of billions of dollars and thousands of lives in the path of another hurricane. The French Quarter and other areas on relatively higher, more valuable commerical and historic land, could be walled off with bigger, stronger levees. But perhaps much of the population that lives in the most vulnerable areas should be disbursed to safer locations. Tear down the Superdome and build a new stadium in Baton Rouge. Maybe then the Saints could actually have a winning season.

Turn of the Hoo

That would be a good title if Henry James collaborated with Dr. Suess. Having made that declaration, I thought it would be a good idea to read one of James' most famous "nouvelles", his 8,000 word The Turn of the Screw. This is a good length of a book to commit yourself to as you await the arrival of your next full length Civil War battle history, via Amazon's free standard shipping (3-5 busines days).

Reading James in the wake of Hemingway is like driving a school bus - albiet a very stylized one, with Victorian arm chairs instead of bench seats - after having just driven an Italian sports car. His writing is dense, slow, and plodding. The sentences go on, and on, and on. At the end, you are left wondering if he was actually mocking the circumspect way people approached sex and morality in his day. In fact, upon further consideration, he was.

This was no ghost story. Someone asked me if the book scared me. That person, a close relation of the older generation, grew up in an era that had its share of scary movies (Frankenstein, Dracula, etc). But after having seen The Sixth Sense and Signs, a few English spooks puttering about a country house in 1898 won't give me nightmares.

Rather than being about ghosts then, The Turn of the Screw is about how when people try too hard to shield children - and adults - from sin and temptation, they often end up causing more harm than good. I feel now like I just ate a big bowl of spinach salad. I really didn't enjoy it, but I feel better for it. I may read James' The American one of these days (I started it and put it down about 15 years ago); but only if Amazon is really, really late on a delivery.

The Sun Also Rises

Re-read Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises this week after twenty-two years since the first time I read it. Re-reading a book like that is a great way to sensitize yourself to how much wisdom and experience you gain as you get older. It is a completely different - and better - book the second time around. On the first read, I viewed it as a great travelogue that gave me an intense desire to hang out in sleepy Spanish towns, drink the wine of the country, and fly fish. On this read, it fed the same compulsion, but also allowed for reflection on current and past friendships and the nature of women. Two of the most complicated and intriquing subjects known to man. Again, a strong book recommendation.

After two novels this month, I feel the Civil War jones coming back. Will read part two of Rhea's account of Grant's 1864 overland campaign next. The first part, read last fall, dealt with the Battle of the Wilderness. Now we are on to Spotsylvania, to be followed by North Anna River and finally Cold Harbor. Intend to have the whole series done by mid-2006.

Added Preposition

A missing preposition has been added to the description of this blog. Hat tip to the woman from the waterside compound.

Shantaram

I posted a review of two books I read earlier this summer on July 16, and the response was so underwhelming, that I thought I would post another. As loyal readers may recall when I wrote that review, I said that a friend had lent me a novel of almost 1,000 pages, and that the review would be posted long about November. So what am I doing here, on August 8, a mere three weeks later?

As it turned out, the book, Shantaram, By Gregory David Roberts, was only 933 pages long. Yet they were about the best 933 pages I’ve read in any novel for at least the past ten years. Every now and then in life, the perfect book comes along at the perfect time, and this was one of those cases. Shantaram was only recently released, and supposedly a movie of the same name is coming out next year. Much to my chagrin, Johnny Depp is slated to play the main character. As you might imagine, we are not big Johnny Depp fans, notwithstanding his half-decent Keith Richards impersonation.

Anyway, I don’t want to give much of the story line away. Basically, Shantaram is a semi-autobiographical account of a man who escaped from a maximum security prison in Australia, fled to Bombay in the early 1980s, and created a new life for himself working for the Bombay mafia as a counterfeiter and black market currency trader, living in the slums, operating a free clinic for the people who lived in the the slum, and fighting the Russians in Afganistan. As action-packed as all this sounds, and it is as action-packed as they get, the book has much more to do with the our purpose in life, the meanings of love, hate and forgiveness, and how people struggle with and overcome the very difficult challenges that we all inevitably face from time to time. It demands a fair amount of deep introspection and reflection – between detailed accounts of knife fights and all manner of intrigue.

The book was recommended by PH, and he’s never steered my wrong on a book before, nor I him, and I won’t steer you wrong either.

The next posting will deal with more mundane topicality. I still have that big backlog from June to deal with. It’s been a busy, busy summer. But some free time is coming up over the next three weekends, so expect lots of new stuff and a new name for the blog as well. We are still evaluating ideas, so keep those cards and letters coming.

Book Recommendations: Franklin and Washington

Just finished two books that I recommend to anyone interested in American History. The first, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life, by Walter Isaacson, is an excellent study of a complex man who many regard as the first modern American.

Franklin was a successful businessman who, by the time he was 42, had enough money to devote his life to the things he liked to do, without concern for money. He was a great believer that people, voluntarily cooperating in groups, can accomplish much good for society. For example, he started the American Philosophical Society, founded the country’s first volunteer fire department, municipal police force, and even a private militia during the French and Indian War, to defend Philadelphia during a time when the Quaker dominated assembly would provide no funds for the defense of the colony. The Philadelphia Associators, as they were called, played a key role in the revolution in 1776 and 1777 as well.

Franklin became one of the great applied scientists of the day as well. We all know about his flying the kite in the thunderstorm, but the practical benefit of that experiment was his invention of the lightning rod, which saved thousands of lives throughout the US and Europe. He was the first person to describe positive and negative charges of electricity, and first used the term “battery” to describe a device that could store electricity.

Franklin was also an incredibly successful diplomat, both in England before the Revolution, as the agent of Pennsylvania and later other colonies, and in France during and immediately following the Revolution. He was the only person to have signed all three of the most important documents of that era: The Declaration of Independence, The Constitution, and the Treaty of Paris. He was a master communicator and manipulator of the media, and was probably two centuries ahead of his time in that department. Franklin also seemed to have maintained an unhealthy obsession with teenage girls well into his old age, and treated his wife with indifference while he pursued love interests in three countries. His son, William, became estranged from him and died an unhappy man, after being exiled to England for siding with the British during the Revolution. When Franklin died, he put significant funds into trusts that were to be administered by the Cities of Philadelphia and Boston to promote scientific advancement. The final grants of money from his endowment were awarded to inner city kids for their science projects in 1990.

Washington’s Crossing, by David Fischer, is a magnificent account of one of the most dramatic times in the history of this country. If you have even a vague understanding the events leading up to Washington’s crossing of the Delaware on Christmas night, 1776, the subsequent battles of Trenton and Princeton, and their critical role in the survival of this country, you should read this book. It will dispel many notions that have somehow made it into our popular mythology. Chief among these misconceptions are that the Hessians were all hung over from a night of Christmas celebrations when they were attacked – they weren’t; or that the battles were really minor skirmishes in the grand picture of the war. The winter campaign was a major military conflict and completely turned the war around from an almost certain defeat for the Americans to a decided advantage for the Americans, in many respects. It is one of the best page turners I’ve read in months. Washington emerges as the great leader of men and brilliant strategist that most people have lost sight of after two hundred years of his secular-patriotic sainthood.

Not sure what I’m going to read next. A friend lent me a novel so I think I am going to dive into that, but it is almost a thousand pages long so look for a review of that in, say, November.

Boom!!! Wintergreen Va, July 2, 2005  

Ooooh!! Aaaah!!, Wintergreen, Virginia July 2, 2005

Dad at Monocacy Battlefield, June 25, 2005 

Thank You Very Mulch

We spent the first weekend back home working on the house. The WB and I worked in the front yard. I mulched, and he helped by filling up his little wheel barrel with dirt, then dumping it out, and then repeating the process. He no doubt enjoyed the process, and I couldn’t have been happier. For the record, it takes about 51 cubic feet of mulch to take care of the average front yard. You have to first edge around the flower and tree beds with a flat handled shovel, which is dirty, tiresome work. The Dog spent both days perched in the front yard, watching the people and cars go by, chasing the occasional small animal, and contemplating our next posting, which will be on the judicial nomination controversy.

Since we were out in front of the house all weekend, everyone – and I mean every last person – in the neighborhood stopped by to say hi. So sometime about mid-afternoon Saturday, we invited one couple and their kids to come by Sunday evening to cook out hamburgers and hotdogs. We then felt that if we were going to invite them, we should invite some of the other neighbors and have a little cook out. To make a long story short, we ended up having 25 adults and 16 kids over Sunday evening and the party went on till the late hour of 9:30 pm. It was a great party and about a ton of food, beer, and soda was consumed. This ended up being our “thank you” party to let the folks in the neighborhood know how much we appreciated their help over the last few months. Our neighbors showed what the word community means over the last few months, and we are exceedingly grateful for their thoughts, help and prayers.

Railroad Earth Show at the State Theater, May 19, 2005

Saw Railroad Earth at the State Theater last night. I was joined by friends JM and AF, plus his friend Smilin’ Bill from Atlanta. Cousin-in-Law CB and his crew from Baltimore made the trip as well. A good time was had by all. I’m not intimately familiar with RRE’s material, as I don’t listen to them at home or in the car all that often, so I didn’t recognize many of the songs. It was, though, the fifth time I had seen them so I was quite familiar with their jamgrass style. It was relaxing to hang out with friends, sip some bourbon drinks, and get into the excellent music.

The crowd at the State was a friendly mix of people ranging from grey-haired bluegrass types, twenty, thirty and fortyish professionals, college kids, and about a dozen people who might be still be in the denial stage following Jerry Garcia’s death, which was ten years ago this summer. The latter group included one young man who stood in the rain in front of the theater in a neon, tie-dyed poncho, Birkenstocks and neon face paint, selling some sort of psychedelic artwork. I’m fairly certain he is the same guy I saw the night before dressed up as Chewbacca, waiting in line for Star Wars tickets as I drove by the Lee Highway Multiplex.

As much fun as the show was, and I will see them again at the State to be sure, RRE is a festival band, and best enjoyed that way. Their tightly meandering notes beg to be heard echoing across the fields, woods and hills on a summer afternoon.

Willie comes marching home again, Hurrah, Hurrah! 

Harper's Ferry From Maryland Heights, May 7, 2005

The Dog Responds to Reader

A thoughtful reader provided some interesting feedback on the Pope Musings of last month. The Dog and I have not had much time to provide the reflective response that the feedback has deserved. When we have had time, we have forgotten that we still had that base to cover. Anyway, we opened up a box of dog treats and some Indian food from a local restaurant last night, and re-read the feedback. So here goes.

The reader began noting considerately that the posting had allowed him the opportunity to, in his words, “hold a mirror up to myself and to explore how I could feel such thorough respect for someone with whom I often disagreed strongly”, referring to Pope John Paul II. We appreciate that sentiment, as we think the same way. But too often, positions on issues seem to be based on reasons other than what right or wrong. It is difficult to respect people who clearly do not take their stands on issues based on their view of right and wrong.

For example, John Kerry last week voted to continue funding the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. So now he can say he voted for it, before he voted against it, before he voted for it. If John Kerry really was against the war during the campaign, as he said he was, then he should have remained consistent and voted against it again. If he was not against the war, then he was simply posturing during the campaign to energize his left wing base. The evidence suggests that unlike John Paul II, Kerry takes positions on life-and-death matters based on tactical political considerations, rather than on his core beliefs.

Just the other day, Kerry was in the newspapers condemning the proposal to close the Otis Air National Guard Base on Cape Cod, saying, “Otis is the number one base for homeland defense on the entire East Coast. . . . It simply makes no sense to close Otis in the post 9/11 world."

Otis (not to be confused with Otis the Frog Boy) is an F-15 base, and John Kerry recommended canceling the F-15 program in 1984. If John Kerry had his way, there wouldn’t even be an Otis Air Force base to close. John Kerry is not an example of the kind of man I can respect in a political disagreement. I do respect someone like Harry Truman (sorry to have to go that far back) because he actually believed that expanding the New Deal and forming the United Nations were the right things to do. I oppose both of these policies in general, but I respect Truman as a man. (This is an ironic example, because Truman couldn’t have been elected to the Senate if today’s standards were in place in the late 1930s, due to his ties to the Pendergast machine in Kansas City.)

Is there anyone else I can respect? Well, yes. On a personal level I have certain friends, including the reader, whose opinions I respect because they are thoughtful and come from a good place. I am always open to someone showing me how I might be wrong. But the political views promulgated by contemporary politicians seem to come less and less from a view toward what is best for the country and humanity at large. Too often, policy positions are based on what is good for the party, special interests, or worse, blind hatred toward people who hail from a different segment of society. The Democrat Party, as much as I can’t stand its current incarnation, is not unique in this regard. The Republicans can end sugar quotas tomorrow if they wanted to, but they won’t. The Central American Free Trade Agreement should be fast tracked as soon as possible, but it won’t be. I do, however, believe that the leftists in this country exhibit far more hatred toward conservatives than the other way around.

Hillary Clinton, oddly enough, is attempting to position herself as a reasonable person who actually bases her opinions on right and wrong. I can’t believe that I am writing this, but compared with Harry Reid, Barbara Boxer, and John Dean, she actually looks like a grown-up. If she can avoid outbursts in front of her extreme constituents, she may actually have a chance in 2008. Our money is on George Allen, though.

The reader also asks, “Is simply not caring what your detractors have to say always the best way to go?” No. I might have put that too starkly. Any good leader should consider all reasonable points of view. But I chose the word “detractor”, instead of “adversary” for a reason. A detractor is someone who attacks the person in question ad hominem. An adversary is someone who attacks the ideas put forth by the other person. A good leader listens to arguments against his ideas, but ignores the personal attacks. Harry Reid called George Bush a “loser” last week. Al Gore says he "betrayed" the American people. Kerry said Bush "F'ed up" Iraq (he used the original vernacular in Rolling Stone). When was the last time you heard George Bush refer to an opposing political leader with such language?

Policies should be based on certain bedrock principles. Those values should rarely change. If they do, they should evolve slowly and deliberately. Some of my core beliefs are: free markets are the best way of allocating resources and should be regulated with a light hand; rule of law – not of men - is the foundation of a successful society. People should be rewarded for working hard and taking risks, and not be given incentives to not work. Evil in the world exists all around us, and can only be defeated through strength and the credible threat of violence – whether from a policeman's or homeowner’s handgun, or from a B-52. (Some of the Dog’s core beliefs are: all squirrels are bad and should be chased; all dogs should be taken for a walk at least once a day; and the sofa is always more comfy than the dog bed. )

Our reader stated that my thinking was “inconsistent was when you were castigating American Catholics for criticizing (John Paul II) for not changing his views while at the same time criticizing America for imposing its views on the world. You called this hypocrisy. I don't see that. I see that as consistent, criticism of the Pope and criticism of America for unyielding positions and actions in world affairs. Again, maybe I didn't follow your thinking, but I took issue with that.”

My argument here may need restating. I was pointing out a double standard that I doubt many left wing American critics of the Catholic Church have considered. American leftists criticize America for imposing its views on the world. I understand that position, and it is a good basis for a debate. But at the same time, the same people criticize the Catholic Church for not reforming to align with the values of modern, American Catholics.

Catholics in most of the rest of the world, particularly in Latin America, Africa, and Southern Europe, are far more conservative in their religious beliefs and follow Catholic dogma to a much greater extent than the average American Catholic does. So who are we to impose our values on the rest of the world? I don’t argue that the American Catholic’s viewpoints are wrong, per se, I just find it to be a double standard if at the same time they criticize us for promulgating freedom in the world. That is why part of my thesis is that if an American Catholic doesn’t like the core values and teaching of the Church, he or she might want to consider whether they are in the right church. If it is hubris to tell the rest of the world that they should adopt US-style democracy, isn’t it also hubris to tell the rest of the world to adopt US-style religious standards? I argue that the average person in Central America would be more upset with the US if Americans forced the Catholic Church to permit abortion on demand than they are about our opposition to the Kyoto Treaty.

The reader closed with the declaration, “And let the record show that the left has no monopoly on hypocrisy.” The Dog has so entered that statement into the record.

Harpers Ferry Hike and Shaq

Took advantage of the nice weather Saturday, May 7 (partly cloudy, windy, high in the 70s) to hike up Maryland Heights opposite Harpers Ferry. Brother EB and friend JK came along, and the Dog as well. I assigned her the task of carrying her own provisions, which seemed to make her happy as she likes to feel like she is contributing. We started near ATC HQ, about a mile above the railroad bridge over the Potomac. After walking down the hill through town, past Hilltop House, crossing the bridge and going about a quarter mile up the C&O towpath, we reached the trailhead. The trail is a five mile loop hike, with a fairly steep uphill grade for the first half (and, of course, an equally steep grade downhill for the second half), gaining 1,100 feet in 2.5 miles. On the way up, we passed old civil war gun emplacements and powder magazines. On the top are the ruins of the Union fort, including a 100-pound battery (a very large cannon for its day), that commanded the confluence of the Shenandoah and Potomac Rivers for much of the Civil War. On the way back down is a spur trail - about a half mile round trip from the main trail – that leads to the cliffs overlooking Harper’s Ferry, with a spectacular view up and down the Potomac, and up the Shenandoah. This is one of the more scenic vistas available within a few hours of DC and well worth the trip. For those who want to do this hike, I recommend paying the park service fee and parking your car near the railroad bridge in Harpers Ferry, unless you want to cap off your day hike with a one-mile uphill hike, like we did. It would have been worse if any of the taverns in Harpers Ferry allowed dogs, which they don’t. Doing that last uphill leg with cool muscles and a belly full of beer would not have been much fun. As it stood, we waited until we got back to Ashburn, only 35 minutes away, to quaff a few cold ones. Next time, I may leave a six-pack in a cooler in the trunk.

No observations on the world today, although a minor rejoinder on the Kwame Brown posting is in order. Sports divas, as I've said, are the bane of professional sports. Shaquille O’Neal has proved that point in the past several days. He is “boycotting” the media for several days because he wasn’t voted MVP this year. I just can’t root for a player who behaves like that, regardless of how talented he is. Michael Wilbon wrote a relatively balanced piece in today’s Post on the subject. Wilbon could have gone further in refuting any insinuations of racism, and his criticism of Shaq was more circumspect than it needed to be, but at least he set the facts out on the table. Steve Nash earned the award fair and square, and that’s the way it goes. Shaq had a strong case, but he came up short in the voting. He has every reason to be disappointed. However, Mr. O’Neal would be doing himself and the rest of us a favor if he would react with a little grace and dignity, and check his attitude at the door.

Little Boy and Factual Dog in Baltimore 

The bathroom mirror and shelf pictures explained

Some of our regular readers may have been puzzled by the pictures posted last week showing a bathroom mirror and a shelf over our kitchen door. Not to worry. This blog is not being transformed into a vehicle for publicizing obscure decorative details of our house. It just so happens that the dog's Mom has not emptied her email inbox recently and can't receive emailed pictures. Because she is in the hospital taking care of our little buddy, I thought I'd post some pics of recent projects I've worked on around the house. This way, I could demonstrate to her that I've done more useful things than conversing with our dog, eating M&Ms and watching the History Channel. She was the only intended audience for those pictures. If I ever get the steel shelves done in the basement, I may post pictures of them as well. So don't panic if you see them sometime next week.

Philosophical Differences

So the Wizards dumped Kwame Brown over "philosophical differences". The Dog and I bristle when such threadbare, cynical nonsense is proffered by sports management to explain a situation that is already well known to the general public. It is insulting to the fans, and makes the parties involved in the decision look like they have something to hide.

Philosophical differences? I am imagining a heated debate between Eddie Jordan, the Existentialist, and Kwame Brown, a disciple of Nihilism, as reported in the Washington Post:

Coach Eddie Jordan, in a closed door meeting with Brown today held firm to his position that existence holds precedence over essence, and man is totally free and responsible for his acts.

"This responsibility is the source of the dread and anquish that encompasses mankind", Jordan stressed to the 23-year old former prodogy.

Brown would not have any of it, maintaining, in his words, that "All values are baseless and nothing can be known or communicated".

"I guess we have a philospohical difference then", sighed Jordan.

"I guess we do, Coach", mumbled Brown as he got up and strutted toward the door and out of the organization.

I am the first to admit that I am a fair weather professional basketball fan. When the Wizards are in the playoffs, I'm interested. When they are not, I'm not. Hence, I have not followed the sport for many years. A big part of my indifference is the attitude of players like Kwame Brown. I won't go into this anymore than necessary, but professional sports is almost ruined by spoiled "sports divas" who get paid millions before they have paid any dues or proved themselves whatsoever. Basketball, probably more than any other sport, has been debased by this phenomenon (setting aside professional football wide-receivers for a moment).

Anyone watching the Wizards lately knows that they are playing as a team. They look almost old school. There is no room for a Kwame Brown on a team like that. Now, I am not naive. Kwame's play has been terrible, and he has fallen far short of expectations. If he were averaging 30 points and 10 rebounds a game, the Wizards would be loath to let him go for any reason, "philisophical" or otherwise. But the pooch and I hope that this little episode sends a message, if to nobody else than the kids who are watching and modeling themselves after these players.

So we are hopping on the Wizards bandwagon. In the meantime Kwame, don't let the door hit you on your way out.

Happy! 

A day in the park 

The Bells I Hear

Scientists say that after a major earthquake, such as the one that caused the recent tsunami in South Asia, the Earth literally rings like a bell long after the earthquake is over. Sensitive equipment can detect reverberations coming from the Earth’s core for weeks after the event. Geologists studying ruptures in the landscape can easily calculate the magnitude of past earthquakes hundreds and even thousands of years after the quakes occurred.

* * *

One hundred and forty years ago tonight, a man shot Abraham Lincoln in the back of his head. He had been enjoying the theatrical comedy, My American Cousin, in Ford’s Theater.
As most Americans know, Lincoln died at dawn the next day. His death came less than a week after Lee surrendered at Appomattox, and on the same day that General Johnston asked for terms from General Sherman in Raleigh.

Savoring the relief that victory brought after four desperately stressful years, Lincoln took a carriage ride with his wife that last morning. He remarked to her that he felt alive for the first time in many years. He talked of visiting Europe, California, and the Rocky Mountains after his Presidency. With the incredible weather we are having today, it is easy to imagine how he must have felt. A day like today makes a person want to make big, wonderful plans.

Around this time in April every year, I think more about the Civil War than I usually do. It was in this month that the conflict began and ended. Each year of the war, April marked the time when the roads were drying out, which meant that the summer campaign season was only weeks away. The armies would be busy striking their winter camps, refitting their equipment, and thousands of horses would be returning from their winter grazing lands, far from the front. Men would be preparing to die.

All this activity took place amidst the incredibly beauty and mild climate of Virginia in the springtime. When I visit the Civil War battlefields and historical markers, my imagination allows me to be feel connected to the events that happened there. There is nothing supernatural about what I am talking about. I read the stories, understand who was where and when, and then I orient myself to the present landscape. If you look close enough, you can often see the trenches and rifle pits. In certain locations throughout Virginia, bullet holes can still be seen on the sides of houses. The Crater in Petersburg is one of my favorite spots.

With the exception of minor skirmishes in five or six locations, Lincoln’s assassination was the last, violent lurch of the four year cataclysm that rocked the United States to its core. The reverberations are still with us, all throughout our society. I can hear the ringing well, especially in Virginia, and especially in April.

The Factual Dog does not go much for poetry. We leave that in more capable hands. So we urge our readers not to come to expect it too often. Today is different. We will end with something written long ago to mark the events of April 14-15, 1865.

O Captain! My Captain!

by Walt Whitman

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done;

The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won;

The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,

While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring:

But O heart! heart! heart!

O the bleeding drops of red,

Where on the deck my Captain lies,

Fallen cold and dead.

O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;

Rise up - for you the flag is flung - for you the bugle trills;

For you bouquets and ribbon'd wreaths - for you the shores a-crowding;

For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;

Here Captain! dear father!

This arm beneath your head;

It is some dream that on the deck,

You've fallen cold and dead.

My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;

My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;

The ship is anchor'd safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;

From fearful trip, the victor ship, comes in with object won;

Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells!

But I, with mournful tread,

Walk the deck my Captain lies,

Fallen cold and dead.

Pope Musings

Driving to and from Baltimore with the Dog is getting to be a habit lately. She doesn’t enjoy traveling in cars very much. An accident in her puppyhood left her with a life-long aversion to sudden braking, which, as it happens, occurs often on I-95. On the bright side, the 90 minutes in the car does provide us some quality time to catch up and review the issues of the day.

The Pope is dead, and his passing warrants the Factual Dog’s commentary. I remember well the time when the papacy of Pope John Paul II began. It was the fall of 1978, two months into the 10th grade. I had been raised Catholic, and wore a small Pope Paul VI medal around my neck in those days. I was never a terribly devout Catholic, though. We had to go to CCD on Tuesday afternoons, and for some reason I remember Tuesdays in my youth as always being sunny and 75 degrees outside. By the ninth grade, after my Confirmation, I had persuaded my Mom to get me off the hook from having to go to CCD.

Actually, “persuaded” might be a bit misleading. To be more precise, I made a deal with her that I never delivered on. I told her that I would independently follow the lessons, as that was the only way I said would learn. She needed only to trust me to study by myself and not force me to forego my Tuesday afternoons. After enough of my haranguing, Mom gave in. As things turned out, I probably never performed a single minute of independent work once she released me from my CCD responsibility.

I have always felt bad about that breach of trust for two reasons. First, and foremost, I broke a deal I made with my Mom, and it was over something that was not trivial. Second, I deprived myself of the spiritual and moral education that I might have received if I had continued with CCD.

I say “might” because CCD, except when my Mom was teaching it when I was in the third grade, wasn’t all that great. After all, I don’t think we ever even learned what the acronym CCD stood for. I remember standing in the parking lot of St. James with my friends debating over what the letters represented, in a similar manner as my high school friends and I later attempted to decipher of the lyrics of “Louie, Louie”. Nobody was ever quite sure; but each person seemed to want everyone else to think that he, and he alone, knew.

My older brothers and sister stuck with CCD longer than I did, and I’m fairly sure they derived some benefit from it. If nothing else, they learned that they had the capability to stay on with something they didn’t like over the long haul. However, I doubt seriously that they could tell you that CCD stands for “Confraternity of Christian Doctrine”. That term didn’t come up during our parking lot debates. The real, innocuous lyrics to “Louie, Louie” never occurred to us either.

The net of the CCD deal with my Mom was that I learned a very bad lesson: you can take the easy way out, and get away with it – at least in the short term. This is a lesson I will be careful not to allow my son, or any future children, to learn on my watch. My Mom is not to be even slightly faulted for accepting the deal I offered. She had six kids and her own elderly, failing mother to take care of. The last thing she needed, or had the patience for, was my whining to her every Tuesday afternoon.

The Dog, who has been resting her snout on my shoulder from the back seat of the Volvo, chimes in with an impatient growl, “OK, enough of the self-flagellation. We all do things we regret later on. What about the Pope?”

Yes. What about the Pope?

He was one of the great men of my lifetime. Alongside Ronald Reagan, a greater or braver world leader hasn’t existed on this planet since the death of Winston Churchill. Moreover, he exhibited bravery on a personal level that perhaps Reagan never did. After all, Reagan was born into the Midwestern US during the early twentieth century; a place and time where corn and confidence stretched from horizon to horizon. Although he came from somewhat of a hardscrabble background, Reagan had a great deal going for him as well. He gets props for standing up to the Communists who ran the actors union; but Reagan’s WWII service was in a public relations role in the Army. He was a movie actor in Southern California at a time when Karol Wojtyla was performing forced labor in a limestone pit near Krakow and studying for the Priesthood in an underground seminary under the noses of the Nazi SS.

Yet many, many people exhibit personal bravery in combat situations, natural disasters, or simply doing the right thing when faced with a moral dilemma. The Pope’s bravery was unique. His bravery was worth noting in the same context that I write of Ronald Reagan because first, he stood for what he believed was the right thing; second, his values were based on love of all people, God, and the his “country” (the Church); and third, he was totally selfless when it came for standing for his principals. He simply did not care what his detractors had to say. I doubt he ever lost a night of sleep due the criticisms of his opponents (Sinead O’Connor, call your office).

I left the Catholic Church under John Paul II. This is true. I simply did not believe in the man-made dogma around certain issues central to the Church’s core DNA. I am talking about allowing priests to marry and allowing women to be priests. These are rules that came into place a thousand years after the Crucifixion. It is unnatural to forbid men to marry, and quite frankly this prohibition attracts a disproportionate number of homosexuals.

Now, I have nothing whatsoever against gay people, and I don’t have anything against gay priests. I just think it is counterproductive to have one rule against married priests, when most people understand that that same rule results in a Clergy that is somewhere between 10 and 30 percent gay, at least in the US. Married people seek relationship advice from Priests, and that advice, for me, must be discounted if it is from a person who has never been married, and further discounted if the person has neither been in nor desired a relationship with a member of the opposite sex. I don’t care if the Clergy has the same proportion of gays as the rest of the population, and if my Pastor were gay, that fact would not, in and of itself, bother me. It just gets a bit out of control when the proportion of gays is 10 to 20 times the proportion in the general population.

Second, and this is a completely separate issue, the US Church is far too liberal. The American Bishops are consistently in favor of socialism, against free market capitalism, and do not recognize that violence is needed to subdue determined, murderous foes of freedom. The Bishops actively campaigned against Reagan’s arms buildup and economic program which, alongside John Paul’s evangelism in Central Europe, were the chief causes of the downfall of the Soviet Union. The USSR was the most brutal government in world history (remember, Stalin killed 20 million of his own people – Pol Pot and Idi Amin were pikers compared to him and Hitler, as hard as he tried, could only kill half that many in the relatively short time he had). When the Bishops opposed Reagan’s struggle against Communism, they lost me. Finally, the American Bishops and the Vatican were against the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars. We are up against pure evil in the world, and it is a sin to not stop it, using all means available. I pity the people who do not understand the threat that true evil really represents.

The Church is against abortion. Although I am opposed to third trimester and partial birth abortion, as I understand the procedure, first trimester abortions should be safe and legal. I have never been sure of where and when the line is drawn in the second trimester and don’t think many other people know where that line should be drawn. I also believe in parental notification. The Pope and I differed on this issue, and on birth control, but I respect him for sticking to his principles.

The Church in the pre-Reformation days was an abomination. It was run by wicked people who did wicked things. But one need not go that far back in the Church’s history to find institutional malevolence. The Catholic Church in the US was actively opposed to the abolitionist movement prior to the Civil War, and they opposed Lincoln’s election in 1860. The Vatican stood by silently as the holocaust gathered strength and the Fascists gained control of most of Europe. They have acted against God, common sense, and their own self-interest in protecting pedophile priests in this country. By allowing Cardinal Law to lead a mass for John Paul II in front of thousands of people only a few days ago, the Church continues to show that just doesn’t get it.

As far as that scandal was concerned, John Paul II didn’t get it either. The Pope appointed Cardinal Law Archpriest of St. Mary Major Basilica in Rome, one of four basilicas under direct Vatican jurisdiction, after Law was forced to resign in Boston. Law intentionally transferred pedophile priests to new parishes without telling parents. Some of these same priests have been convicted of child molestation in those churches. This makes Bernard Law a very, very bad man. I can think of no more elegant way to say it. And the Pope, by all indications, did not have a problem with him.

Still, John Paul II may have not fully understood the issue. Perhaps he really was in his dotage, and as a younger man he might have taken a different approach. Not to be trite, but I will give him a mulligan on that issue because it is the only one where I did not respect his decisions.

I did respect his other positions, even though on many issues I disagreed with him. For instance, he did not seem to differentiate between free market capitalism, as generally practiced in the US, and the kleptocracy in Russia. I’m against stealing too, but I understand the difference between transparent capitalism under the rule of law, and what is going on in Russia, or China for that matter. He criticized capitalism using a very broad brush, and that was counterproductive.

But to those Catholics who criticize John Paul II for standing by his principals with respect to Priests marrying, abortion, women in the clergy, and birth control, I say that you are in the wrong Church. Religious beliefs are not the same as a political platform, in that the latter can be changed as public opinion evolves. The Pope is the protector of the Church, and the Church is one and the same as its principals. I may disagree with him, but if I do, I leave. It would be presumptuous for me to expect the Church to change to fit my view of the world, just as American liberal Catholics are presumptuous for criticizing Pope John Paul II. Of course, these are the same people who love to bash America for supposedly imposing its views on the world. The hypocrisy of the left just never ends.

American liberal Catholics want to have it both ways. They love the ceremony, traditions, cultural bonds and feeling of superiority among Christians that comes with membership. They just don’t like all that messy religious stuff that they really do not agree with. To them, the Factual Dog says, who do you think you are fooling? Not yourself and certainly not God. For me, the honest approach was to join the Episcopal Church. Each person must resolve that conflict as best as he can. But for those people who take an “a la carte” menu approach to their Catholic beliefs and criticize the Pope for defending the Church from contemporary political and social pressures, the Factual Dog thinks you need to do some serious soul searching about what church you really believe in.

The Dog is weary as we pull into the garage of the darkened house. Need to give her some dinner and let her out in the back yard. Big session tonight, and thank goodness, we got through all that without any sudden braking on the highway. She is grateful for that and I get an appreciative tail wag.

And you're my fact checkin' pooch 

Herb Sendeck and a More Weighty Issue

The “Factual” Dog wasn’t so factual about the Wolfpack the other night. Instead of winning 68-62, they lost 64-55. She claims it was the meds that caused her to be so very, very wrong. I have my doubts.

We both like Herb Sendeck, as he has certainly managed to get the Pack into the NCAAs enough times. And he always puts on a strong show at the ACC Tournament. But he never wins either event. Remember being up by 20 against Maryland in the 2004 semis? They lost. How about being up by 13 against Dook in the 2003 finals? They lost. And, oh yea, how about the 1997 ACC tournament finals against UNC? They lost.

The problem is simple, Herb is a poor closer. Should they fire him? No. Let’s see what happens next year. They had injury issues this year. Anyway, we mustn’t dwell. Baseball in DC is days away.

So, the dog is looking at me as if she has something to say. “What is it?” I ask.

“Well”, she says in that matter-of-fact bark of hers, “Isn’t it about time we get to some more weighty issues?”

I reply, “You’re not talking about that Terri Schiavo are you? I’m sick of hearing about that every minute of the day.”

“Of course I’m talking about Terri Schiavo. You say that this blog is about ‘everything in life that matters’, as well as ‘politics’. So your thoughts on this subject are worth noting for posterity, if nothing else. You really can’t back out of this one. That is, if you – or anyone else – is going to take this blog seriously”.

“OK, I get it”, I tell her, “But be careful of what you ask for.”

So this is how I break this issue down:

Reasonable, well informed people seem to disagree on whether Mrs. Schiavo is in a vegetative state or at some minimum level of consciousness. Either way, she is not on “life support”. She is fed by a feeding tube. Life support involves machines artificially operating a key organ, such as the heart, the lungs, or the kidneys. There is a big difference. By removing the feeding tube, they are not ‘letting her die’. They are killing her. So let’s put that to rest right now.

The only reason they kill her that way, rather than via lethal injection or smothering her with a pillow, is to ease the guilt feelings and soften the image of the people doing the deed. Certainly, they don’t starve her to death for her benefit. After all, if she does have some level of consciousness, she is dying a terrible, tortuous death. And if she is truly brain dead, why not just inject her with something that would immediately arrest the heart and get it over with?

If a person is unquestionably brain dead, then it is not morally wrong to cause the heart to stop beating. But who gets to make that decision? The spouse probably should have first call on that, assuming that the doctors and judges are in 100 percent agreement on her state, the latest technology has been used to make the determination, and the spouse has no conflicts of interest.

If, for some reason, the spouse wants to sustain the patient’s body in a situation meeting the above criteria, he or she should pay for it. In the event the spouse does not want to sustain the patient, and a parent, brother or sister wants to step in and say, “No, I will take responsibility for the patient, and will pay to keep the body alive”, then he or she should be allowed to do so.

The surviving spouse should be given the opportunity to divorce the patient and marital assets should be transferred to him or her, without any restrictions on their use. In the event that the patient somehow miraculously recovers, there would be a messy situation in trying to get the assets back. From the patient’s standpoint, that would be “a good problem to have”, as they say. How ever that issue is settled, the immediate family would be responsible for ongoing financial support.

For this solution to work, the surviving spouse cannot have a conflict of interest. The automatic transfer of the assets should take care of that. There may be emotional conflicts as well, such as is the case with Mike Schiavo, who has two kids with another woman. He didn’t do anything wrong by being with this other woman. The relationship developed years after Terri’s being declared brain dead. He needed to move on with his life. However, the situation does create a conflict of interest that cannot be ignored.

Also, hearsay evidence regarding the patient’s wishes should be very cautiously used in determining the patient’s fate. Michael Schiavo somehow remembered, seven years after his wife had been hospitalized, that at one point in the 1980s they were watching something on TV about a person on life support, and Terri said that if she were ever in that position, she would want the plug pulled. This “repressed” memory surfaced only after he had begun living with another woman. How many people with opinions on this issue are even aware of this fact?

Two things are wrong with Mr. Schiavo’s story: (1) While it is possible that she said she wanted to have the “plug pulled” if she were ever brain dead, it is hard to believe that she specifically said, “If I am ever in a state of minimal consciousness on a feeding tube, please disconnect it so I can die of thirst”; and (2) Michael’s conflict of interest throws this story in doubt, no matter how hard one might want to believe it. The Factual Dog believes that if hearsay evidence cannot be relied upon to send a murderer to the death chamber, then it certainly has no place in this circumstance.

The issue of determining brain-dead status is, admittedly, a bit out of the Factual Dog's domain. Aside from about 63 percent of the people who supported Howard Dean and John Kerry last year, I’m really not sure what a brain dead person looks like. But I would assume that the determination of brain-dead status would involve the latest technologies, such as CAT scans and PET scans. But Michael Schiavo blocked these tests from being done, as if he was afraid the tests might tell him something he did not want to hear. He also blocked any kind of therapy for the woman, which, although unlikely, might have helped her at least partially recover.

Which brings me to the political aspect of this affair. I am really scratching my head about over the question of why so many people feel emotionally committed to seeing her killed.

The answer cannot be that they care abut what is best for her. If they did, then they would be in a logical thicket. Think about it: If she is brain dead, then she cannot have any senses of any sort. So killing her wouldn’t be putting her out of her misery, because she is incapable of experiencing misery. So what harm is done if her immediate family wants to step in and take responsibility for her because they believe in miracles? On the other hand, if she is capable of experiencing misery, then she isn’t brain dead and killing her is murder.

I also don’t think folks are so revved up over this because of their concern for Michael Schiavo. After all, when was the last time you saw anyone on the Left get all bent out of shape in fighting for the rights of a husband to dictate control over his wife? This is hypocrisy. Michael Schiavo, by many reports, is not a very nice fellow. For crying out loud, he allegedly remembered his wifes wishes to not be kept alive only after $400,000 was placed in a medical trust for her. And the Left wants to stake out a position in his defense as the single person who should decide on life or death?

The emotions may also come from people who somehow see this case as a proxy for the abortion debate. The Dog will weigh in on that issue soon enough. They see this as a wedge to drive between religious conservatives and other types of conservatives, such as the Factual Dog, and they just enjoy pouring gasoline on that particular fire. As an added bonus, how often do they get an emotional, headline-grabbing issue that catches not one, but TWO Bushes in a political dilemma?

Finally, and this one really hits the mark straight on: There is a huge gaggle of people out there who are consumed with hatred for evangelical Christians. When they see that evangelical Christians are supporting one point of view on an issue, these people instinctively migrate to the opposite position and put on their battle armor. We here at the Factual Dog are neither “evangelical” Christian, in the popular sense of the word, nor do we have any cultural affinity with moral majority types. Quite the opposite on many “values” issues. However, the Left loves to stir up a big fuss whenever a small group of fundamentalist Christian types show up on television with their placards and chants. The Left wants all of America to think that that is how ALL Christians, and by association, Republicans, look like.

To sum up my thoughts on this case, if the parents want to take the financial responsibility for Terri, they should be able to do so. The judges should discount anything Michael says with respect to her wishes due to his financial and emotional conflicts of interest. Finally, the court should significantly raise the bar used to determine whether a patient is brain dead of not. In short, I simply don’t see why we shouldn’t let Terri’s parents take care of her, and let Michael Shaivo go his separate way, unencumbered by any ties to Terri.

Pooch has had enough. She gets a treat today. Hopefully the Lyme disease is getting better. Her nose, which was warm all last week, is cold today, so that’s good.

March Madness

The dog is tired tonight. She is on medication for, of all things, lyme disease. All she wanted to talk about was basketball and how lame the games have been so far tonight. Illinois and Louisville. Yawn. Let's get some ACC action on. WVA and Texas Tech are playing now. We really don't like Bobby Knight, and WVA is nearby. So we suppose we are cheering for the Mountaineers. Still, how fun would a Coach K/Knight matchup be? Either way, it doesn't matter. NC State, she says, will win tomorrow night by a score of 68-62. They don't know hoops in Wisconsin. They know sausages, cheese, and beer. Not bad, but tobacco road it ain't. What is the over/under on that one? Must be the one of the lowest in history. Really should lay some money down.

Introducing The Factual Dog

As part of a fifth grade assignment, I kept a daily journal, or log, for the entire school year. I saved that journal for many years. At some point in my twenties, it disappeared; probably during one of the many moves I made during that period of my life.

All I remember of that log was the first entry, in which I described how I spent the day. In school, we were introduced to the “New Math” that was all the rage among the education establishment in the 1970s. Our teacher, Mrs. Snell, began the first day’s lesson with a single, memorable question to the class: “Has anyone ever talked to you about sets?”

Being some distance from the front of the class, and perhaps distracted by a little blond girl named Christine who I had a crush on, I thought Mrs. Snell had said “sex”.

Not that sex was on my mind. I’m fairly certain that I had, at best, a sketchy idea of the notion. That education came in the sixth grade, when I read Jaws and, with my own jaw dropped wide open, was inadvertently exposed to the steamy details of the extramarital affair between Dr. Hooper and Chief Brodie’s wife. That part of the book didn’t make it into the movie.

Anyway, I thought Mrs. Snell had said “sex”, and that caught my attention. It sure took my mind off of Christine. My attraction to her was based on something I couldn’t put my finger on, but certainly nothing as remote in my mind as sex. Once Mrs. Snell began to enlighten us on sets, I quickly realized that I had heard her wrong, and that today’s lesson wasn’t going to be as awkward or fascinating as I momentarily thought it would be. My mind began to wander away again, just as it had done in every classroom since kindergarten began in 1968, and would continue to do though the end of business school in 1998.

The New Math, as it turned out, was basically a load of crap. I am comfortable making this statement, notwithstanding the fact that I got a C in math in the fifth grade. I just thought it was an incredibly roundabout way to teach some fairly simple and logical concepts. I figured the “old” math out well enough on my own, and that has worked for just fine for me.

During recess that day, I played on Log City, the immense, one-of-a-kind log play structure behind our school. Log City was the coolest playground in the universe. Made entirely of wood, it featured at least 300 ways for kids to get hurt on each of its three levels. Four log ends, each about 10 feet long, protruded from the top floor. Truck tires dangled from heavy duty chains attached to the log ends to form old-fashioned tire swings. On one side of Log City was a sort of log ladder, about 10 feet wide and leaning over about 45 degrees. The rungs were made of logs about a foot thick, with just enough room between them for an elementary school-age kid to get his foot caught in as he climbed down.

When we got enough kids stamping our feet in unison on the top of Log City, we could make it shake enough for us to think that it was going to topple over. From a structural engineering standpoint, we were probably close to making it do just that. But Log City provided about the most fun a nine-year old could find during the average elementary school recess hour. We loved it.

Of course, Log City did cause me my share of grief. In the sixth grade, probably about the same time I was undergoing my literary deflowering, courtesy of Peter Benchley’s shark attack-disguised-as-sex yarn, I cut my neck on the sliding board. As I hurtled down the colossal sliding board from the second story of Log City on a crisp winter day, the hood of my coat got caught in an exposed bolt sticking out from one of the logs. My coat was of the kind that every kid wore in the mid-1970s, with ersatz fur trim around the hood. The fur trim was intended by the little kid coat designers, I’m sure, to confer a sense of arctic adventure on their pint-sized consumers. The zipper pinched hard into the skin of my neck right below the Adams apple and cut deeply. To this day, people still ask me about the scar. I usually demur with a soft-focus voice, “I’m not ready to talk about that yet”.

About fifteen years later, just after I graduated from college, Log City was listed by some do-good safety group as being among the ten most dangerous playgrounds in the United States. It was promptly torn down.

Since then, Tuckahoe’s playground has been transformed into the “Tuckahoe Discovery Schoolyard Project”. It even has its own web page and “mission statement”:

"The Tuckahoe Discovery Schoolyard Project is a shared vision of the principal, teachers and parents at Tuckahoe to expand the school learning environment to the natural world. The mission is to create an exemplary, educational schoolyard. Principal Brown explains, "Our use of outdoor classrooms encourages broad-based learning that taps into the strengths and interests of all our students. It promotes interconnectedness on two levels - by blending the entire learning community and bringing so many areas of the curriculum together in a real-life setting."

Log city didn’t have a mission statement. Perhaps that was its downfall. Instead of swinging from tires and playing tag, the kids now have “interconnectedness” to look forward to at the recess bell.

In my journal entry that first day of school, I also introduced my friend Trey, who I described as my best friend. I lost touch with Trey after elementary school. Even though we went to the same junior high and high schools, we developed different pursuits and naturally went our separate ways. About 10 years ago, sometime after I turned 30, I ran into Trey in the beer aisle at the Giant. We talked for a few minutes, picked up our six packs, and bade farewell. There was no sentimental journey back in time. We were friends when we were little, but we’ve both changed a great deal since then. So has the world around us.

So what has happened to the world and me since that first day of fifth grade in September 1973? If I had kept that log updated, I could do a much better job of answering that question. The best I can do is sum things up in an endless list of broad generalizations: I grew up. Educational methods have evolved. Society is more litigious. There are more people everywhere.

In short, I have a good idea of how things used to be, and how they are now. I just don’t have a very good handle on how we got from there to here.

So this web log, or blog, is a continuation of that journal I started, and stopped, over thirty years ago. I will record my own observations, thoughts and experiences, and include the contributions of others, living and dead, as I see fit. The objective of the Factual Dog is simple: whatever the world and I look like 30 years from now, I will be able to better explain how we got there than I can describe the evolution of the last 30 years today.